The Looming Epidemic of Safety Net Hospital Dialysis Program Closures

I've done three recent posts on the crisis at Grady Hospital in Atlanta that has led to closure of its dialysis program. (See here, here and here.)

As I predicted, the problem is spreading. Now Jackson Health System in Miami-Dade county is closing a dialysis program that has been serving 175 South Florida patients.

Jackson is a prototypical safety net program, as evidenced by these statements from a video about the system: “we proudly step forward when others step back,” “people turn to Jackson when they have nowhere else to go,” and “when there is nowhere else to turn we reach for the impossible every day.”

The details about Jackson are different from Grady, but the underlying theme is the same. Like Grady, Jackson serves large numbers of uninsured patients. In 2008 it spent more than $500 million on charity care. But it ran a deficit of $200 million, which is clearly unsustainable. The dialysis program was losing $4 million per year. I haven't been able to ascertain how many of the 175 dialysis recipients are undocumented immigrants.

For the moment, none of the dialysis patients are in a crisis situation. Some have been able to get onto public insurance programs. Some are having their treatment continued for now at the dialysis centers Jackson contracts with. And some are coming to the emergency department for emergency treatment, which is paid for by emergency Medicaid funds.

The next steps in the scenario are predictable. Jackson will be blamed for (a) not caring and (b) poor management. Undocumented immigrants will be blamed for coming to the U.S. and "milking the system." Government - county, state and federal - will be blamed for underfunding. Citizens will be blamed for refusing tax increases.

There's probably a bit of truth in each blame statement. But the result of all the finger pointing will be more impasse. The dialysis recipients will suffer, and some may die prematurely.

This isn't just a Miami problem, any more than the Grady situation is just an Atlanta problem. Insofar as the dialysis patients are uninsured citizens it's a national problem. And insofar as some are legal or undocumented immigrants, it's an international problem.

I'm not wise enough to know what the best solution for this safety net problem is, but I do know the best way to find it.

We need to convene a working group to scope out the dimensions of the problem and identify options for action. The ideal convener would be the Secretary of Health and Human Services (or her designate - perhaps the Assistant Secretary for Health). The Medicare End Stage Renal Disease Center would be a key participant, as would the National Association of State Medicaid Directors and safety net providers, perhaps via the National Association of Public Hospitals & Health Systems. Because a substantial portion of the patients who are put at risk by program closure are immigrants, the Office of Citizenship and Immigration Services should be represented. And, because programs sometimes try to send immigrants back to their countries of origin, largely in Mexico and Central America, the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs in the State Department should have a voice.

This may seem like overkill for a problem that involves a relatively small number of people. But the values at stake are central to who we are as a country and to the way others see us. Abu Ghraib involved very few people, but for millions, at home and abroad, it is, and should be, a source of shame. It won't take many stories, photos and videos of dying people "dumped" back to their villages, to do the same.

The problem isn't an easy one. But we should not be leaving it to individual safety net programs to struggle on their own, either by swallowing what will ultimately be unsustainable debt or by taking emergency action based on an inevitably narrow perspective.

Unfortunately, we are more likely to leave the problem to our frayed safety net than to kick it upstairs, where it belongs. That means that in 2010 and 2011 we'll be seeing more Gradys and Jackson Health Systems

(I learned about the Jackson Health System situation from a recent article by Kevin Sack of the New York Times, who has done brilliant reporting on Grady.)